In Aug-Sept 1941 Heinz Guderian visited Hitler personally in order to get new tanks. All Hitler had to offer was 200 spare engines...I think this tells exactly how well Hitler was prepared for the Barbarossa.

Also in summer 1942 as the Red Army retreated towards Volga Hitler was convinced that the Red Army was running out of men ( "The Russian is dead" was Hitler favourite slogan of the time ). So he ran straight into the trap. Originally it seems the main Red Army reserves were around Moscow waiting for Hitler´s attack there in spring-sumemr 1942. I do think it would be logical that the next attack would continue where it stopped Dec 1941 but Hitler wanted the oil and later on Stalingrad. So it took a while to move the troops where Hitler was attacking.

T.A.
If I remember correctly the January 1944 Red Army attack for opening the siege of Leningrad really tore the German army out of its position. If you have any detailed info on that I´d be interested to hear! ( And Za as well, wouldn´t you!? )

Russian site maps:

http://rkka.ru/maps1944.htm

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Kai, Finnish brains must be amazingly healthy as obviously you don't need to spend much time operating on them. I say this because you pop up with so interesting sites that it must be impossible for you to lead a normal working life

Thank you very much for your confidence vote, but as I am spending most time away from my books, I have to use what's left of my memory and (gasp! horror!) use such reputable sources as the Internet. So I won't be able to correspond to your kind invitation.

I may however still pick this from Col. David Glantz:

DECEMBER 1943-APRIL 1944

Context:
A COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF OPERATIONS ON THE EASTERN AND WESTERN FRONTS DURING THE WINTER CAMPAIGN OF 1943-44

Ø From January through March 1944, 18 Allied divisions were bogged down at Anzio and Cassino in central Italy against an equal number of German divisions.

Ø From January through March 1944, the Red Army launched massive offensives with 10 fronts, 55 armies, over 4.5 million men, and over 300 divisions and liberated the Leningrad region, penetrated Belorussia, and reached the Polish and Rumanian borders. The assaults badly damaged 3 German Army groups and inflicted over 1 million casualties on the Wehrmacht.

... (large snip)...

During this period, General L. A. Govorov's Leningrad Front and General K. A. Meretskov's Volkhov Fronts, soon joined by General M. M. Popov's 2nd Baltic Front, conducted the massive Leningrad-Novgorod offensive in the Leningrad region, a painfully slow* advance that began on 14 January and endured through February and drove Army Group North's Eighteenth and Sixteenth Armies back to their Panther Line defenses. At the same time, the 1st Baltic, Western, and Belorussian Fronts conducted limited diversionary operations against Army Group Center's forces in eastern Belorussia.

This is in page 69 of http://www.strom.clemson.edu/publica...g-war41-45.pdf This is essential reading, but be warned that this is a 9Mb PDF file!

* nobody said the Germans couldn't fight!

(And yes, we should go back on topic and develop a new thread. Why don't we revive the Mother of All Threads, Kursk? [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

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za ........... yes please go back to Kursk

2 cents

Easy now, we're all friends here.

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"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

What are you looking for? An OOB? Can probably provide that. A detailed look at the attack on AGN? Possibly. The OOB would take like a week or two to produce. A detailed look at the battle, maybe a month or so.

No, my friends,

not a battle here in the forums!

I definitely know what happened so I was hoping for a view of the battle from different sides, not to start a new battle, sorry about that.

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Like previously mentioned : "Breathe,eat and sleep WW2" stolen from the famous football ad
" Breathe, eat and sleep football"

[img]graemlins/salute.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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Kai is right this is essential reading. I came accross this last year, I think because of a post that Kai put up. It took several weeks of quality time in the reading room to finish it. It is an excellent treatment of the Soviet-German conflict.

One of the most interesting things about it for me was the way that the author treated the subject of material at the beginning. The author detailed the reason that comparitive histories are so unbalanced due to the lack of accuracy and availability of Russian documentation. It seems that while Stalin may not have had the same mental illness that Hitler had when it came to seeing what was really happening, he had no fondness for recording it for future generations. I too recommend this as essential reading.

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PEOPLE SLEEP PEACEABLY IN THEIR BEDS AT NIGHT ONLY BECAUSE ROUGH MEN STAND READY TO DO VIOLENCE ON THEIR BEHALF. GEORGE ORWELL

I allways wondered who was that I.Q. champion who figured out to equip german tanks with petrol engines ? As i know Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine at the early 20th century. He was German. So the Germans obviously had the best diesel technology. They had to know that the diesel engine consumes less fuel and has more torque at low rpm, so it is much better for heavy vechiles like tanks. Instead they used a complicated Maybach petrol engine in the Panther and Tiger. ( T-34 had diesel engine)
Another mistery for me. Germans attacked Russia. Than they realised that Russians have superior tanks like T-34,KV-1. What were the German spys do before the war? Went on a holiday ? Sorry for bad english.

The German spies were all working for the other side...


German intel during WW2 was blooming useless on the whole.

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.

Then you may find this interesting too, Iceman

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/e-front.htm

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Not necessarily, for instance, Russians invented the razor blade as everybody knows, but the American made ones were a lot better. Even Herman Göring was aware of this!

Of course this has to do with exactly what engines are available to the tank plants at time of design, which type of fuels can be cheaper/easier to produce or import. Diesel engines also are built to more demanding specifications, are generally heavier, it's all a matter of choosing which drawbacks you can live with, assuming you have the means you can make your own decisions.

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I agree if he allowed them to retreat they would do much better. Except for one time you mentioned. I believe that in the first winter in the battle of moscow, the stand fast order was needed. It made the germans stop running from the Soviet attacks and deal with them and more importantly winter head on. It helped the Germans deal with their first winter in the USSR. If not, the chances were that the Germans would have been routed all the way back to Germany. The germans remember Napolean being repeled back to the begining and the Germans would run in an all out retreat at this point. The stand fast stopped that and the Germans took heavy losses but did not retreat. Otherwise, your right about all other cases.